DBMS > ClickHouse vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. QuestDB vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. QuestDB vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	15.55
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.66
Rank	#107	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	0.04
Rank	#387	Overall
	#61	Key-value stores

Website

clickhouse.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

questdb.io

rethinkdb.com

swaydb.simer.au

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

questdb.io/docs

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

Google

QuestDB Technology Inc

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Simer Plaha

Initial release

2016

2017

2014

2009

2018

Current release

v24.4.2.141-stable, June 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.
DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.

Implementation language

C++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

C++

Scala

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Java
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Triggers

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Sharding

range based

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID for single-table writes

Atomic single-document operations

Atomic execution of operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

through memory mapped files

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes

users and table-level permissions

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

Fluid real-time dashboards with Grafana and QuestDB
11 June 2024

QuestDB 8.0: Major Release
23 May 2024

QuestDB and Raspberry Pi 5 benchmark, a pocket-sized powerhouse
8 May 2024

Build your own resource monitor with QuestDB and Grafana
6 May 2024

Does "vpmovzxbd" Scare You? Here's Why it Doesn't Have To
12 April 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.